Web content to PDF converter
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There a number of tools for converting web content to a PDF. Has anyone used one from within Seaside? I'd like to generate a PDF from a div, not the entire page. We already use PDF4Smalltalk and Report4PDF with a rudimentary HTML parser. It can create PDF content for HTML that has bold, underline and italic markup. Users use this to add content to reports. Report4PDF can render the user content either as HTML or generate a PDF. Complex content, like tables and images, is not supported. And I have not interest in adding support. For code generated content Report4PDF works fine. But for user entered content it is not optimal. I'd rather use something that can represent complex user content. Anyone have experience with this? Thanks, Bob Nemec _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside
Bob Nemec
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Re: Web content to PDF converter
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Hi Bob,
I have a report generator and I've been using wkhtml2pdf [1] to generate the PDF files. It supports CSS... and JavaScript! And has a lot of print related tweaks. The good thing is that this enables the user to "view" the content generated in the browser and then download it as PDF with minimal modifications. For that I have a stylesheet that is optimized for printing. There is a commercial alternative called PrinceXML [2] that is the best option I know for doing the same as the above, but with many more supported options (like keeping some content together when printing, etc.). I remember contacting them years ago, but the pricing was too high for my customer and the project I was working at. The owner was one of the creators of Opera Browser and CSS3 itself AFAIR. Another option, that I'm considering for a new project, is to use Headless Chromium [3], that I expect would produce a similar output as that of a Chromium based rendering. To generate the input to be passed to wkhtml2pdf I simply instantiate a WAHtmlCanvas and then render components the usual way, but the stream is a temporary file which I then pass as argument to wkhtml2pdf. ( Seaside.WAHtmlCanvas builder ) fullDocument: true; rootBlock: [ :html | html meta charset: 'utf-8'. "html stylesheets..." html title: self reportElement title , ' - ' , self applicationName ]; render: [ :html | self renderReportContentOn: html ]. The good thing is I can reuse existing components such as WAReport or my own. I was thinking of creating my own visitor that does something other than `renderContentOn:` (like #renderPrintContentOn:`), but then this worked and other requirements came by, and never got back to it. Regards, [1] https://wkhtmltopdf.org/ [2] https://www.princexml.com/ [3] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless-chrome Esteban A. Maringolo On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 10:06 AM Bob Nemec <[hidden email]> wrote: > > There a number of tools for converting web content to a PDF. > Has anyone used one from within Seaside? > I'd like to generate a PDF from a div, not the entire page. > > We already use PDF4Smalltalk and Report4PDF with a rudimentary HTML parser. > It can create PDF content for HTML that has bold, underline and italic markup. > Users use this to add content to reports. Report4PDF can render the user content either as HTML or generate a PDF. > Complex content, like tables and images, is not supported. And I have not interest in adding support. > > For code generated content Report4PDF works fine. But for user entered content it is not optimal. > I'd rather use something that can represent complex user content. > > Anyone have experience with this? > > Thanks, > Bob Nemec > > _______________________________________________ > seaside mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside |
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Thanks Maringolo, That is exactly what I was looking for. Bob
On Wednesday, August 12, 2020, 09:33:48 a.m. EDT, Esteban Maringolo <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hi Bob, I have a report generator and I've been using wkhtml2pdf [1] to generate the PDF files. It supports CSS... and JavaScript! And has a lot of print related tweaks. The good thing is that this enables the user to "view" the content generated in the browser and then download it as PDF with minimal modifications. For that I have a stylesheet that is optimized for printing. There is a commercial alternative called PrinceXML [2] that is the best option I know for doing the same as the above, but with many more supported options (like keeping some content together when printing, etc.). I remember contacting them years ago, but the pricing was too high for my customer and the project I was working at. The owner was one of the creators of Opera Browser and CSS3 itself AFAIR. Another option, that I'm considering for a new project, is to use Headless Chromium [3], that I expect would produce a similar output as that of a Chromium based rendering. To generate the input to be passed to wkhtml2pdf I simply instantiate a WAHtmlCanvas and then render components the usual way, but the stream is a temporary file which I then pass as argument to wkhtml2pdf. ( Seaside.WAHtmlCanvas builder ) fullDocument: true; rootBlock: [ :html | html meta charset: 'utf-8'. "html stylesheets..." html title: self reportElement title , ' - ' , self applicationName ]; render: [ :html | self renderReportContentOn: html ]. The good thing is I can reuse existing components such as WAReport or my own. I was thinking of creating my own visitor that does something other than `renderContentOn:` (like #renderPrintContentOn:`), but then this worked and other requirements came by, and never got back to it. Regards, [1] https://wkhtmltopdf.org/ [2] https://www.princexml.com/ [3] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless-chrome Esteban A. Maringolo On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 10:06 AM Bob Nemec <[hidden email]> wrote: > > There a number of tools for converting web content to a PDF. > Has anyone used one from within Seaside? > I'd like to generate a PDF from a div, not the entire page. > > We already use PDF4Smalltalk and Report4PDF with a rudimentary HTML parser. > It can create PDF content for HTML that has bold, underline and italic markup. > Users use this to add content to reports. Report4PDF can render the user content either as HTML or generate a PDF. > Complex content, like tables and images, is not supported. And I have not interest in adding support. > > For code generated content Report4PDF works fine. But for user entered content it is not optimal. > I'd rather use something that can represent complex user content. > > Anyone have experience with this? > > Thanks, > Bob Nemec > > _______________________________________________ > seaside mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside _______________________________________________ seaside mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside
Bob Nemec
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In reply to this post by Bob Nemec
Hi Bob
Usually I generate HTML to a file with seaside techniques and then convert it with the open source command line tool "wkhtmltopdf". To generate HTML I use something like this: ************************** component := ... builder := WAHtmlCanvas builder codec: (GRCodec forEncoding: 'utf-8'); fullDocument: true; resourceUrl: 'file:///path/to/local/webroot/files'; rootBlock: [:root | root title: 'blabla'. root beHtml5. root stylesheet resourceUrl: 'css/style.css'. component updateRoot: root]; yourself. xhtmlString := builder render: component. GRPlatform current write: xhtmlString toFile: 'blabla.html' inFolder: 'xyz'. ************************** Cheers, Andreas
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